I am currently building an Alexa application that analyzes a user's name. I currently have a slot (called name) that uses the built in AMAZON.US_FIRST_NAME slot type. I want to validate the name by comparing it against amazon's list of US_FIRST_NAMES, instead of having to download a list of names somewhere and comparing the user's name against the list. Is there any way to do this through the Amazon Developer Console?
Note: In Amazon's docs (https://developer.amazon.com/docs/custom-skills/validate-slot-values.html) I have read that there are ways to validate built in slots. However, on the development console, the validation tab for my name slot only allows me to accept or reject the user's input from a list of names that I have provided, not Amazon's built US_FIRST_NAME list. Have I missed something?
In the Alexa console, you have three options:
You can define a custom list of values to accept or reject, or you can choose to accept only the slot type's values and synonyms.
If you see the option to accept the slot type's values and synonyms, I imagine this will do what you are looking for.
If for some reason it doesn't give you that option, then you could actually create a custom slot type and copy and paste the entire list of US names from Amazon into the proper place in your JSON file, though this would make for quite a large file.
I hope this helps.
Related
I'm building a chatbot with the Dialogflow-CX V3 console. The bot allows users, among other things, to place an order for a new project. Each project must have a name, so I define a parameter called projectName that the user must provide. I have defined a custom entity type called projectNameText, a regex. I can capture projectName in a form using a typical Q-and-A format:
bot: What is the project name?
user: SalesPitch
But that is rather tedious. I want to allow more freeform user input and capture the projectName using an annotation on an intent training phrase.
bot: What would you like to do?
user: I'd like to make a new project called SalesPitch
When I define a training phrase for an intent like
I'd like to make a new project called Annabel
I can highlight Annabel in the console's intent editor and annotate that as an entity of type #projectNameText as described here. But that instantly creates a parameter with Parameter id projectNameText. And I cannot edit that Parameter id. I can't require that when Dialogflow matches that training phrase and extracts an entity of type projectNameText, it puts it into the parameter projectName. Dialogflow demands that it goes into a parameter called projectNameText. When I run the simulator and type input that matches that training phrase, Dialogflow does indeed correctly extract the entity, but will only create a parameter named projectNameText - I can see the name and value in the simulator.
This answer implies that I can send the matched entity into any parameter I want. That would be sensible. But how do I do it? I can't find any way to edit the parameter name in the Intent editor. All it gives me is this:
and I cannot change the Parameter Id.
I must be missing something really basic. Hints, please?
It is indeed not possible to edit the Parameter Id in the Intent Editor directly.
Instead, in the Intent Editor from the Build tab, accept the default Parameter Id, and Save the modified intent.
Then go to the tabs on the left of the Dialogflow CX console and choose the Manage tab. Choose Intents from the menu and find the intent you have just edited from the menu. Click the intent name to be given a different version of the Intent Editor. Same fields, same data, different functionality. In this different Intent Editor, click the Parameter Id you want to edit. It is now editable. Do not forget to hit Save after editing it.
From start to end, that took thirteen days to find. I posted here and received no answer. I finally subscribed to Google Cloud paid support and raised a support case and was given the answer in a video call with Google India. Perhaps it should be in the Google Documentation.
Let's say I have a dynamic list of items which I upload from a webhook at a certain step of a scenario. This list is not a list of some type of pre-defined entities, this is just a list of something.
So,
$session.params.items = ["item_1", "item_2"]
Now, at the next step user can either choose one of the options provided in this list or make something else. It seems that the best way to check whether the next user query has something to do with our list of items, I need to declare a non-required parameter. But if I do this way, they necessarily require an entity type.
So, the question is:
Is is possible to use any list or dict from session parameters as an entity type?
What is the best way to implement checking whether user query falls into one of the session variables like list taking into account that user query may as well go to other intent and so on. I supposed the best way is to have routes for filling in unnecessary parameters and for intents, but still I can't do the first part.
I have an API response in which a field gives me an array of objects. I want to prompt the user to select which one of these objects in the array they want to see the details of. For example, if the API response has a field like:
"field":[
{"number":"101","name":"abc","value":"final output 1"},
{"number":"102","name":"xyz","value":"final output 2"}
]
I want the prompt/card to ask which number and name the user wants to choose, accordingly I want to show the corresponding value to the user. The number of objects in the array can vary. I would prefer if this prompt is in the form of an adaptive card like the one in the attached image, but any solution would do using bot composer's capabilities.
One viable solution would be to build a card in code. You can parse the response from the API and use it to create a card which can then be sent by the bot. Since this is Composer, you can look into creating a custom action to hold this logic.
As the user AP01 has said, one good solution to this problem is to do it inside the code. You can create a custom component that will execute C#(or nodejs if you use that) code in which you can then easily deserialize/parse/process that json array and create a custom card that will then be display to the user. That is how I did it.
I am developing a series of Slack apps for my workspace, and some of them are meant to interact with the content (messages) delivered by the other apps : extracting content IDs that may be referred to by other messages
A concrete example :
Suppose I have an app A "FindUser" that is capable of giving me the user profile when a slack user types find me#example.com, and it replies in the thread with a formatted view of the user profile
I am developing an app B "EditTags", which basically gives me a right click option with "edit tags" (see Slack's Interactive Components/Actions), the idea being that a user could first ask app A to find a user, and then right click on the reply from App A and click the "edit tags" action given by the other app. What this app B does it actually retrieve the tags for the user mentionned by the previous message from app A, and in another reply to the thread it gives some controls to either delete an existing tag OR it shows a select with autocomplete to add new tags.
The B app needs to retrieve the user ID that the A app mentionned previously. So I need some way to pass that data directly in the slack message. When looking at the examples, slack does not seem to provide a way to add arbitrary "metadata" to a message, am I wrong ? Do you have workaround for this ? I mean I could totally send the user ID say, in the footer, so I can just read the footer, but I was planning to use the footer for something else... Is there a way to pass metadata hrough properties that would be hidden to the end user ?
Although this does not feel relevant, I am building a slack nodeJS app using the node slack sdk (and especially the #slack/interactive-messages package)
For the most part the Slack API does not provide any official means to attach custom data / meta data to messages. But with some simple "hacks" it is still possible. Here is how:
Approach
The basic approach is to use an existing field of the message as container for your data. Obviously you want to pick a field that is not directly linked to Slack functionality.
Some field are not always needed, so you can just use that field as data container. Or if its needed, you can include the functional value of that field along with your custom data in the data container.
For example for message buttons you could use the value field of a button and structure your code in a way that you do not need it in its original function. Usually its sufficient to know which button the user client (via the name field), so the value field is free to be used for your custom data. Or you can include the functional value of your button along with the custom data in a data container (e.g. a JSON string) in that field.
Serialization
All messages are transported through HTTP and mostly encoded as UTF-8 in JSON. So you want to serialize / de-serialize your data accordingly, especially if its binary data. If possible I would recommend to use JSON.
Length
The maximum allowed length of most fields is documented in the official Slack API documentation. e.g. for the value field for message buttons can contain up to 2.000 characters. Keep in mind that you need to consider the length of your data after serialization. e.g. if you convert binary data into Base64 so it can be transported with HTTP you will end up with about 1.33 characters for every byte.
Contents
In general I would recommend to keep your data container as small as possible and not include the actual data, but only IDs. Here are two common approaches:
Include IDs of your data objects and load the actual objects
from a data store when the request is later processed.
Include the ID of server session and when processing the request you
can restore the corresponding server session which contains all data
objects.
In addition you might need to include functional values so that the functionality of the field you are using still works (e.g. value of a menu option, see below)
Implementation
Dialogs
Dialogs provide an official field for custom data called state. Up to 3.000 characters.
Message buttons
For Message buttons you can use the message action fields / value. Up to 2.000 characters. Its also possible to use the name field, but I would advise against it, because the maximum allowed length of that field is not documented.
Message menus
For Message menus you can use the value field of an option or the name field of the menu action.
Usually the value field is the better approach, since you have a documented max length of 2.000 and it gives you more flexibility. However, you will need to combine you custom data with the actual functional value for each option. Also, this will not work for dynamic select elements (like users), where you can not control the value field.
When using the name field note, keep in mind that the maximum allowed length of name is not documented, so you want to keep you data as short as possible. Also, if you want to use more than one menu per attachment you need to include the actual name of the menu into your data container.
Normal message attachments
Normal message attachments do not contain any suitable field to be used as container for custom data, since all fields are linked to Slack functionality.
Technically you could use the fallback field, but only if you are 100% sure that your app is never used on a client that can not display attachments. Otherwise your data will be displayed to the user.
For example, I have a field that give user to type their domain, the user can type any domain on this, but I don't valid this domain is belong that user. Of course, I can generate a random number text file for user to upload, and when I get the random number text file, if it is match, I can just treat it as a valid domain holder. But, except from this method, is that anyway to do so? Thanks.
Options I have seen:
Have user Create a Text file in document root, check for it
Send Email to contacts listed in whois (Or other ROLE type accounts (postmaster, hostmaster, etc...), with token they need to
return
Have them create an 'A' record in their DNS that is unique and you can query for.
There really isn't any other way of telling if they have control over the domain. Using whois information isn't 100% accurate as people don't update it, or their info isn't registered to them, or is hidden behind something like domains by proxy. There is no standard information in DNS, that can tell you ownership. Since google uses the DNS method and the text file method (I think), you can probably safely assume that is a good way to verify it.